Beautifully written and moving redemption romance!

After a terrible accident lands his best friend in jail, a guilty and self-hating Cooper drifts aimlessly for 3 years before washing up in Santo Ignacio, a small Californian beach town, where he gets a job at Nachos, the local gay bar. There he meets Shawn, a beautiful local deaf boy, and Cooper finally stays to heal. But when Jordan gets out of jail and begs for him to return home to Minnesota, Cooper can feel his old life pulling him back down. I absolutely loved this, Cooper’s accounts of working at Nachos were poetic and hypnotic, like a Hemingway memoir. Confronting Jordan and the tragedy in Minnesota was hard but good and I loved to hate Stan, the self-important pastor, who had insinuated his way into Jordan’s life. The chemistry between Cooper and Shawn was scorchingly and tenderly well-written, I love how they used text and signing to overcome the communication barrier. I also really loved Thomas Fawley’s audio narration, he had an age-appropriate voice, he had a mesmerising cadence that totally suited the poetic text, and his flattened affect for Shawn was perfect.

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